


hands

by watfordbird33



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 16:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10283045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: For Peter Pettigrew. Who could have been a hero, if anyone had shown him how.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I realized too late that all of my Animagi details are terribly, terribly wrong. Let's pretend that in this version of reality the Marauders got to choose their Animagi forms instead of it being like their natural alternate self.

Tell me something.

(Tell me a lie, and I’ll show you why you’re wrong.)

Tell me Peter Pettigrew died alone and lost and broken. Tell me he should have suffered more. Tell me he betrayed his friends and broke a thousand hearts.

Tell me he _killed._

Tell me there is no redemption for what he did. Tell me, then, that he was not redeemed.

* * *

 

But what, after all, is redemption?

It is not a happy ending. It is not pity. It is not an explanation.

It is the way the villain looks up, bleeding out. The way he grabs the hero’s hand and says, in a voice too cracked and blistered to recognize:

_I’m sorry._

That is redemption. Two words.

By those standards, Peter got his redemption.

* * *

 

Tell me another lie, now. Tell me he didn’t deserve it. Because I know that’s what you’re thinking.

* * *

 

I’d like to paint you a picture.

There is a small kitchen and a skinny boy and a woman who looks like she’s been through a hurricane and a half.

The walls are peeling. It’s cold. The boy shivers. His jeans are too big for him and his mother looms over his pathetic figure.

Perhaps not a painting.

Perhaps a movie.

Watch her hand come down across his face.

(The audience gasps.)

Tell me, then, that a dark past doesn’t excuse this murder.

Harry Potter, after all, had a dark past. He grew up alone and lost and broken, just like Peter Pettigrew.

Tell me Harry _could_ have been like Peter, but he wasn’t.

Tell me he chose the right path.

What is _the right path?_

* * *

 

Another movie. Another painting.

Watch the boy, eleven now, press his nose to the compartment door on the Hogwarts Express. He leaves smudges and fingerprints.

Watch the three boys, halfway down the corridor.

Black hair and glasses and broad shoulders.

Black hair and a knife-edge jaw and disdain.

Brown hair and scars and quiet eyes.

* * *

 

Tell me the Marauders were heroes. Tell me they were golden. Tell me what Peter did to them, after the way they’d taken him in, was unforgivable.

But they did not take him in out of pity.

They did not take him in to protect him.

Remus saw him practicing Bat-Bogey Hexes in the corridor.

He told Sirius--

Sirius told James.

They broke down all Peter’s barriers and they told him what he could be.

Was it so wrong, for him to believe them? Was it so wrong, to watch them all with such adoring eyes?

They said, _We have someone you could use that hex on._

They pushed him. He didn’t want to.

He was afraid.

But he was smitten, too. He was a little bit in love with all of them. Their fierce eyes and the way they moved.

Tell me it was all in good fun.

Just schoolboys having a laugh.

He cast the hex on Severus Snape and they laughed and laughed and they were not heroes. They were not golden. They were boys drunk on power. They should have known better.

Go ahead and make excuses and tell me they were young.

They _were_ young.

All in good fun,

just having a laugh.

All I’m saying is that they wouldn’t have taken Peter in if they hadn’t seen his hexes.

* * *

 

Tell me he should have spoken up.

He had not spoken up for _eleven fucking years._

He had not ever spoken up. He had not learned to speak up.

* * *

 

Please do not misunderstand me.

I do not begrudge you your hatred, your beliefs.

I know. I _know._

He killed, after all.

But just because he killed doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a redemption.

I’d give everyone a redemption, if I could.

I’d catalog dark pasts and I’d forgive. I’d pinpoint all those places where the path forked.

One wrong choice leads to another, but you can trace the cascade back to the beginning. You can see what they started as. You can see who they used to be.

* * *

 

In the eyes of others, Peter was invisible. He was an understudy. He was that fat little boy in the background.

(He ate because he hadn’t had enough, before. And they laughed at him for it. Even the teachers defined him that way. The fat kid. The chubby boy.)

He had _starved._

He had starved, and they punished him for it.

* * *

 

Tell me, with an air of relief, about Remus.

(Remus is a saint. Remus can do no wrong. I, you think, will have no argument against Remus.)

Go on, then. Test me.

Tell me Remus protected Peter.

Tell me Remus loved Peter.

_Remus did not love Peter._

But Peter loved Remus. He fell in love with Remus’s quiet eyes. His scars and his brown hair.

He loved him and he trusted him and he was betrayed by him, unknowing, long before Peter ever thought of betraying James and Lily Potter.

* * *

 

A side note, here. Just a moment to pause and reflect.

Remus was the one who said:

_We have someone you could use that hex on._

* * *

 

In second year, some Slytherins met Peter around a corner and beat him up. He didn’t know until much later that Remus had seen the fight and not stepped in.

(They did not take him in out of pity.)

(They did not take him in to protect him.)

* * *

 

Take a break and tell me about Severus, for a second. Tell me Severus deserved his redemption.

(I agree, by the way.)

Was the only reason he deserved his redemption because he didn’t kill, as Peter had?

_He killed Dumbledore._

He loved Dumbledore, and he killed him anyway.

Peter loved James, and he killed him anyway.

Tell me it’s different. Tell me Dumbledore was old.

_Old._

So that makes a difference. Death, it seems, is more accepted when it greets the old.

Is that true?

They cried for Dumbledore more than they cried for Peter Pettigrew. And they cried for Dumbledore more than they cried for the people Peter killed.

I don’t know what point that serves to make. I just know it’s true.

Tell me Dumbledore commanded Severus to kill him.

Severus could have refused. He could have loved him more.

(Loving someone isn’t knowing when to kill them. Loving someone is trying to save them. Always. At whatever cost.)

_Could have, could have._

Peter could have refused, too.

They are the same. They come from broken homes. They came into the light and squinted, shielding their eyes with an elbow, at that spotlit ceiling. That infinite sky.

You claim Peter does not deserve his ending.

You claim that forgiveness was too much for him.

_Kill him. Kill him like his victims._

_Death is too good for him._

But have you forgotten?

He _died._

If death was all you wanted, you got it.

I agree he should not have lived longer. His time was up. His story had been told.

But to hate him for forgiveness and redemption-- It’s senseless and it’s wasteful and he had a life before he turned to darkness. He came into the light and squinted, shielding his eyes with an elbow, at that spotlit ceiling. That infinite sky.

I followed the cascade back and do you know something?

The Marauders were not the ones made of gold.

* * *

 

Peter went to find Severus, seventh year.

He and Remus--yes, I will give Remus this, because it’s true--were the only ones to apologize.

Remus apologized much later. Severus forgave him, because he was wise, but they did not become friends. There was just brief admiration for the step Remus had taken, the chasm he had crossed. And mutual respect. A Wolfsbane potion brewed at all the full moons.

Peter got more, because he was the first.

He told Severus:

_I’m sorry._

_I shouldn’t have._

_I made a mistake._

_I was young, but I’m not using that as an excuse._

Severus looked at him.

He reached out a hand. His left one.

His sleeve rode up and showed the Dark Mark, and Peter did not gasp or jump away.

Because by seventh year, Severus was the only one left who would:

forgive him

thank him

teach him

pity him.

Even Lily, green eyes flashing, Peter’s last defender, had joined forces with James.

* * *

 

Tell me Lily was the best of them.

Not a lie, for once. The truth. Lily _was_ the best of them.

She forgave and she fell and she gave herself with love. She died in green light for her son.

Whose face did she see, when Voldemort’s wand struck her down?

James, Harry. Remus, Sirius, Peter.

I’d like to think she saw Peter.

(She had no understanding, yet, that he’d betrayed her. Nothing except an enormous blind fear of Voldemort and the death that loomed behind her.)

I’d like to think she saw a scene from fourth year.

Cornered by Slytherin sixth-years.

Peter, emerging from a hallway. Wand out. Stuttering:

_L-l-leave her alone._

The Slytherins had laughed and cast their jinxes, and Peter had thrown up a shield.

There was a hollow bounce as the spells met the shield. Then a scream, and a mouthful of guttural cursing. The Slytherins fell.

I’d like to think Lily remembered that, before she died. Remembered that and told herself:

_Be brave. Be brave like Peter._

* * *

 

Peter took Severus’s hand.

It was not greasy.

It was dry. And there were calluses under his thumb, like he’d been squeezing his wand too hard.

They shook with their left hands.

Perhaps a sign of what was to come:

In eighteen years, Peter would have no right hand.

It would be dropped into a potion with a soft splash. It would be absorbed into Voldemort’s very flesh and blood.

_You’re the only one I ever had hope for._

Peter looked at Severus in surprise. Their hands were still locked.

_What about Remus?_

_You’re not a Marauder, Peter._

They called him Wormtail, and they told him to be a rat because they needed someone who could press the knot on the Weeping Willow. They needed someone to be their lookout. Their protector.

(They had not taken him in to protect him. And yet they trusted him to protect Remus anyway.)

A stag

a dog

a wolf

and Peter following, nipping at their heels.

Wormtail.

They never called him Peter. He hadn’t heard it leave James’ mouth for almost five years.

Tell me he should have argued. He should have chosen a different animal. Tell me becoming the rat sealed his choice.

The rat was complicit in his choice, but the rat was not his choice.

The choice was brought on by the way Severus’s hand felt in his.

The way the Dark Mark loomed bright on his arm.

Seven years of being pushed and prodded and broken.

Peter said:

_What do you want, Severus?_

Severus rolled his sleeve and the Dark Mark coiled on his forearm. The snake spat venom. The mouth gaped.

_You’re stronger than them._

_You deserve someone who will take care of you._

* * *

 

Tell me he had no doubts.

Tell me he went blindly forward. Tell me he gripped Severus’s hand and his heart was full and he saw his whole dark destiny laid out before him in black and white.

No.

* * *

 

Severus told him stories, first.

He wove words to shape Gryffindors as villains. He avoided Lily’s name, and Voldemort’s as well. Instead he said _The Dark Lord_ with a reverence in his voice Peter had never heard.

He said:

_The Dark Lord takes care of me._

_He protects his investments._

_You will be free, if you join us._

_Free from Potter and Black and Lupin._

No Evans. Of course not. Severus was still raw from Lily.

_Free from their legacy._

* * *

 

Let me paint you another picture.

The woman hits the boy.

He stumbles and falls and he’s crying. He leaks tears.

She stands looking down at him for--count them--six seconds. Six seconds is a long time.

She bends.

She scoops him into her arms.

She pulls him against her and rocks him, rocks him. She whispers in his ear. She comforts him, though she was the one to deliver his pain.

She lies.

* * *

 

For seven years, Peter and Severus had fought.

They had battered each other with jinxes and spells. They had sneered at each other from across the room.

Then, just as his mother had done, Severus took Peter’s hand and told him it would be all right.

He said:

_The Dark Lord can be gentle._

_And you’re so powerful, Peter._

_You’re so strong and ready and you don’t even know it._

He taught Peter a spell that would make a man bleed dry.

* * *

 

Tell me James noticed.

Tell me he caught Peter in the Great Hall and asked:

_Are you okay?_

Tell me Sirius watched anxiously from the Gryffindor table.

Tell me Remus put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.

Tell me they tried everything, everything. Tell me it was only Peter’s stubbornness that brought him to the dark side.

The Marauders did not once ask if he was okay.

Only Remus double-taked, sometimes, watching Peter absentmindedly rub his arm before the fire. Or sit slumped in an easy chair, his feet higher than his head, and stare blankly into empty space.

I don’t know what went through Remus’s head.

I don’t know if he thought about going to sit by Peter

saying:

_Hey._

_What’s up?_

_You know I’ve got your back._

If he thought it--or if Sirius or James or Lily thought it--they didn’t act on it.

They left Peter in the easy chair.

He rubbed the spot on his forearm where the Dark Mark would go.

He thought about being loved, and about being protected. He thought about Severus and he thought about the hands.

The hand that slapped him.

The hand Severus had gripped.

(Later, there would be a hand lost to the Dark Lord’s cauldron. There would be a hand that caught Peter around the throat and punished him for his own redemption.)

* * *

 

Here is a moment that has been glossed over. Conveniently set aside:

The first night Peter saw Voldemort.

Probably a dark night.

These sorts of things always seem to happen on dark nights.

Perhaps Voldemort hid his snake eyes and slitted nose. Perhaps he sheathed his white hands and his long scarred torso in ebony robes, so the only impression Peter got was tall and slim and powerful.

He dripped power. He left it behind him in tracks on the forest floor.

The interaction was brief, just two bows and two muttered _my lords_ and Voldemort’s high, cruel voice saying:

_So this is the boy._

And Severus, quickly:

_Can you feel his power, my lord?_

_I can feel power, but I feel no devotion. No real desire. I don’t need a little fat boy casting useless spells._

(Tell me Peter wasn’t wounded.)

Tell me he didn’t feel that curl of dread, of helpless shame.

One kind of strength is ignoring the problem.

One kind of strength is confronting it.

Peter possessed the first strength. In abundance. He closed his eyes and he stayed in his bow and he bit back that curl of shame until it found a home somewhere inside his stomach.

(He had starved, and they punished him for it.)

_Don’t tell me he wasn’t strong._

That’s the one lie I won’t tolerate.

He was the strongest. He came the farthest and he lost the most and he was the strongest.

But they couldn’t see it, so they cast him aside.

* * *

 

After Voldemort had left, Severus turned to Peter.

_If it helps, I don’t. Think you’re…_

_A fat little boy?_

Tell me there was no self-loathing in Peter’s voice. No empty pain.

_The Dark Lord doesn’t seem to protect his investments very well._

A hiss from Severus. Sudden panic. A glance around:

_He could be listening._

Peter bit his lip so hard it bled. He licked the rough edges and tested the taste of salt and copper on his tongue.

Tell me he, like some sort of sadistic psychopath, enjoyed the taste.

(So many nonstop fucking lies.)

_Look, Peter--_

A pause.

_I’ve heard Potter call you the same._

Peter looked at Severus, in the dark.

His nose wasn’t crooked yet. In four months, James Potter would catch up to him leaving the Hogwarts grounds after graduation. He would say, _This is for Lily,_ and he would haul off and punch Severus in the nose.

_He hasn’t really…_

_Has he?_

Severus canted his gaze up to Peter’s and raised a delicate eyebrow.

(They were delicate, once. For a time in seventh year, he kept his hair neat and his face clean. Hoping, maybe, for one last chance at Lily Evans.

I will say this, for Severus Snape:

When he loved, he loved with everything he had.)

_He’s said worse. He’s called you a Squib. Made all sorts of nice jokes about your sex life._

Peter’s face burned.

So now it’s _James or the Dark Lord?_

_It’s never been Potter or the Dark Lord._

Tell me Peter never saw through Severus’s lies.

_Don’t lie to me, Severus._

A shift of Severus’s jaw. Hooded eyes.

_It’s just about what you want from your life._

* * *

 

Imagine your own choice.

Your path forks.

Your time is up.

_Choose._

* * *

 

_Potter will never accept you, no matter how much you change. But if you learn more, work harder, get stronger--_

Tell me everyone has a moral compass.

Tell me Peter should have known.

Peter was broken and bleeding and hurt. He was half a falling star. His cascade had just begun.

Maybe it had begun even earlier, when he cast a spell and bled a rabbit dry.

Maybe this was just the moment when he realized where he was.

Severus was all of a sudden very close.

They reached out to each other and they grasped at shoulders and hands and Peter felt his breath rasp halfway down his throat.

_Do you feel that, Peter? That’s not me._

_That’s you. Your power._

Tell me they were different.

Tell me there was no way Severus could have had any sway over him.

But:

Underachievers, growing up. And the light all around them. They were late to the party. They had no real place.

If you break us, they said, we heal.

They were broken so many, many times.

They each betrayed and then they were betrayed.

An end. A redemption. Some kind of victory, or loss.

* * *

 

Peter clutched at Severus’s lapels.

He buried his face in Severus’s chest.

_I don’t want to make a choice. I don’t want to_

_I know, I know_

_I’m nothing, Sev_

_You’re not_

Tell me he was nothing.

Tell me he was a disgrace.

Tell me Severus pushed him away.

* * *

 

Voldemort found Severus later and he confronted him. He traced his pale fingers a breath over the Mark on Severus’s arm.

(If he had touched it, it would have called them all.)

(And Severus would have screamed and screamed.)

Tell me Voldemort wouldn’t have thought about Peter Pettigrew, after the first time he rejected him.

But he asked Severus anyway. He asked him why he cared.

Severus’s mind was full of the way Peter’s head had felt against his chest.

_He’s been used. He doesn’t realize his own potential._

_I have no time to teach._

_I would teach him, my lord._

Voldemort raised his mask and glowed red eyes and white white skin.

He lowered his fingers and Severus Snape screamed.

* * *

 

Three months later Peter had the Dark Mark on his arm.

He wondered if he would finally be considered brave.

He found Severus in the library and he pulled up his sleeve and Severus gave half a cry and reached for it and pulled it down again.

_Are you crazy?_

Peter listened to the sound of his heart falling in his chest.

Wasn’t this what Severus had wanted?

(Brave. Crazy.)

Tell me they’re different.

_Be brave. Be brave like Peter._

No one ever said, _Be crazy like Peter._

If we’re being technical here, no one ever said, _Be brave like Peter,_ either.

(No one except Lily Evans, as she fell from gold light into green.)

Death is the color of Slytherin, but Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor.

* * *

 

Later Severus apologized. He said Peter had been brave. He said he was proud of him. He said he’d just been shocked, the way Peter had so brazenly ripped up his sleeve.

Four years after that, Severus would wish Peter dead.

He would conjure his Patronus and watch it in the dark and think:

_I loved the man who killed the woman I love._

It would go round and round, inside his head.

Tell me there was hate. I _know_ there was.

But there was pity, too, wasn’t there?

How could there not have been?

* * *

 

I almost forgot:

Have you made your choice, yet?

You’re out of time.

Peter chose already.

* * *

 

Don’t tell me you’d have done better.

Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have cracked under the pressure.

We fall apart. We shatter and we regrow our hearts.

There are things that can’t be mended.

Peter Pettigrew isn’t one of them.

* * *

 

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a boy who had the strength to keep his thoughts from Voldemort.

He thought about things he could have done. He thought about James Potter and Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. He thought about Severus Snape.

Let no one say that Peter Pettigrew was a nobody.

Let no one say he had no strength.

He went on living and lying and hurting and breaking and there was no one to stop his fall.

_If only Severus had loved him just a little more._

If only Severus had had the courage to tell him:

_Come away with me._

Severus had brought him in.

He had held him in the forest and he had let Peter’s tears soak the lapels of his robes.

In the end, he cared too much about his secret.

(Perhaps he knew, even then, that Peter could not keep a secret.)

He did not say:

_I’m a spy. I’m Dumbledore’s._

He did not say: _I’m sorry._

Peter raised his wand. The tip shook. His arm burned. He closed his eyes.

_We have someone you could use that hex on._

A woman was painted in green light. A study in shock. They would find no blood on her, later. Just a mouth fixed half-open, and curious eyes.

His first kill.

Tell me Peter didn’t cry.

* * *

 

When Voldemort told him, Severus saw Lily’s face and she was laughing. She had her arms flung out and she was flying in the summer sun, down by Spinner’s End.

Green and gold. Silver and red.

Where does bravery end? Where does cunning begin?

* * *

 

Confront me, now. I know you want to.

Ask me where my argument is for Harry’s fourth year, when Peter returned to Voldemort.

* * *

 

Yes, that’s silence.

(Don’t get too cocky.)

Let me say, although it’s not really an excuse:

He knew nothing else.

James and Lily were gone. Severus was positioned, irretrievably, at Hogwarts.

He was alone.

He was afraid.

When we are left alone in the dark, we stumble, blindly, deeper. We never think to stay still. We never think to wait for the light.

* * *

 

Tell me Peter loved the hand the Dark Lord gave him.

Tell me it was his first taste of _real_ power. Dark power.

(Now your lies repulse me.)

* * *

 

Silver hand and green wandlight. Sometimes, people forgot, and said he’d been in Slytherin.

Tell me, laughing, that that’s hilarious.

Tell me he wouldn’t have had the guts to survive in Slytherin.

Peter Pettigrew sat under the Sorting Hat for nearly two minutes. It wanted to put him in Hufflepuff.

He said no. He said Gryffindor. He said he would be strong. He said he was strong.

He’d already been teased, on the train. First for staring out the compartment window at the Marauders. _Like a dog._ Then for being so skinny. His robes puddled off him. They pooled on the floor.

Peter had been silent.

The Hat put him in Gryffindor, because it saw the strength that lay behind his mousy hair and beaten eyes. It saw what everyone else had missed.

* * *

 

Harry Potter looked exactly like James.

(Tell me Peter could hold a grudge.)

(Tell me he never felt an ounce of regret.)

He looked at Harry’s wide eyes and they were Lily’s eyes.

Lily and Severus and James. All these destinies, intertwined.

Peter wondered if he’d ever had a place in that entanglement.

He thought of Severus and Voldemort in the dark forest and he thought of how he could have stayed and waited for the light.

(His silver hand crept closer. He paid for his hesitation.)

(Harry called it weakness, but it was strength.)

* * *

 

Harry’s hand locked around Peter’s wrist.

Hands. Hands. It had always been the hands.

_Do something! DO SOMETHING!_

If Harry cared enough to stop Peter’s silver hand, now, why hadn’t he done anything before?

All those missed opportunities--

Love makes us blind.

Peter closed his eyes too tight.

He saw starbursts. He saw silver and green.

Severus’s face. Lily’s.

_James._

(He just wanted to be forgiven.)

(He just wanted to know what defined _the right path._ )

No one ever told him. How was he supposed to know?

Tell me Harry thought once or twice or seven times about his death.

But:

_Heroes have more important things to do._

* * *

 

Peter Pettigrew was thrown aside.

When they remembered him, they remembered him as the fat kid. The chubby boy. Mousy hair and beaten eyes.

Severus remembered lapels, and a Dark Mark.

Harry remembered a rat.

Lily remembered the fourth-year fight.

Desperate, stuttered words.

Peter Pettigrew could have been a hero, if anyone had shown him how.

* * *

 

The silver and green shifted.

He saw the Muggles he’d killed and he cried for them, behind motionless lips and staring eyes.

(Tell me he would not have cried.

Tell me that first flash of green, that transition from bravery to cunning, made no impression.)

_Be brave._

_Be brave like Peter._

Red and gold flared in fireworks and Lily’s eyes were looking back at him.

Death is the color of Slytherin, but Peter Pettigrew died a Gryffindor.


End file.
